Developments

02.04.10

Michael Dell Buys Magnum Photo Archive

The legendary Magnum Photos archive has found a new buyer—billionaire businessman Michael Dell. His investment firm, MSD Capital, has acquired the 185,000 prints in the renowned collective, including works spanning the 1930s to 1998 from over 100 photographers. While the selling price was not disclosed, the collection that Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and other esteemed figures amassed when they founded Magnum Photo in 1947, was insured for $100 million. The archive not only includes iconic portraits of American celebrities, like James Dean in the postwar era, but also images of the Spanish Civil War, World War II, and the Civil Rights movement. MSD Capital plans to lend the photographs to the Harry Ransom Center, a library and museum at the University of Texas in Austin, for the next five years.